


Forget Me Not

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Archival Fic, Don't copy to another site, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Pre-Slash, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:14:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25205320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: One reason why he can't be caught.
Relationships: Johnny "Nny" C./Todd "Squee" Casil
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Forget Me Not

**Author's Note:**

> Back to working on moving stuff over from the spambot...this fic is so old I don't even have a date for it, lol.

When Johnny walks into a convenience store, security tapes unspool themselves in tangled black ribbons or play back a flickering field of snow, black and white and grey, with the occasional burst of red. The clerks and the patrons eye him with anything but indifference, will remember him the next time they see him--in a dark alley, in an echoing basement room, in the same store on another night not quite so lucky as the first--but his face runs like ink in the in-between times. The third police artist in a year snaps his pencil in his fist as a cheerleader flutters her hands about, whining, "He was there; I'm not making this up! Why aren't you assholes ever around when people _need_ you?"

She can't remember Johnny's face when he's gone, but there are only a few who can.

One is an artist. She still dreams of Johnny, wakes in a sweat reaching for the knife she keeps under her pillow. One night it isn't there; it's slipped back, fallen behind the bed, and she's whimpering as she rolls out of the sheets and lands hard on her knees, flattening herself to the cold hardwood floor and stretching her arm as far as it can go. He might be in the room with her right now. He might be _anywhere_ , and she feels his eyes on the back of her neck as she's scrabbling under the bed, finding the edge of the blade before she finds the hilt, cutting her fingers. She grabs it anyway, pulls it close, and she's laughing as she sits up, turns around, her spine pressed to the wall, laughing and cursing with each sobbing breath.

Her room is always empty when she turns on the light. He's never there and always there, and Devi doesn't sleep much anymore.

The second time Johnny goes to Hell is only three years after the first. Heaven doesn't even bother with him this time; St. Peter takes one look at him and reaches for a lever while turning his head to vomit. The lever opens a perfectly neat square in the clouds where Johnny has been sitting, still stunned by his arrival. The first and only thought he has in the vicinity of Heaven this time is: _Those were fucking great cartoons_.

And he falls through a trapdoor between white and black, lands just as hard in Hell as he had in Heaven, and thinks: _Is this irony_? Because who the hell--pardon the pun--falls to Heaven?

The Devil just looks at him--it's the Devil's office he's landed in this time--long, thin face going even longer with a put-upon moue of disgust, like a goat that's found out it can't _really_ eat everything and shouldn't even try. "You've been busy," the Devil says with a sigh. "I thought you were going to quit."

"I was going to join Homicidals Anonymous," Johnny says with a crooked grin, "but I couldn't find a local chapter."

"I wonder why," the Devil says wryly, and Johnny snickers under his breath. The Devil's actually pretty funny. And that's nice, because Johnny's attempt at becoming cold, cold as the stars, lasted about as long as his patience did, and it's...well. He'd missed laughing, being able to let himself laugh without hating himself after, and if you can't laugh at the Devil, who can you laugh at?

"If you weren't so abominably useful," the Devil says, "I'd find you permanent quarters."

"Ooh." Johnny, grinning, sits back more comfortably on his hands. He doesn't think he'll be here long. "So I'm useful now?"

"A sponge is always useful," the Devil says, raising impossibly long fingers poised to snap. "Though I wish they wouldn't drop you _here_ after they wring you out."

"You're mean, Mr. Devil."

"I do try."

Johnny opens his eyes in his own living room and goes to find a band-aid for the round, black hole in his temple. He's going to need another place to live, he thinks; this new city hadn't been the new start he'd thought it'd be.

Another person who remembers Johnny is a dutiful son who listens when his father complains about the extra paperwork. " _He's such an overachiever_ ," and, " _What were they thinking when they picked him for this_?" and " _Why does he keep sending me_ cheerleaders?" Pepito nods in all the right places, keeps his sighs to himself, and rubs at his horns. They always itch after reality gets rebooted when another waste lock dies. Johnny is the only one Pepito knows who ever gets to go back.

Johnny returns to Hell two more times. It just seems to keep happening faster and faster, and he doesn't know why, though he knows why Mr. Satan--or whoever--keeps sending him back. " _You belong to something else_ ," the Devil told him once, and Johnny hasn't forgotten that. He just wishes he knew what, exactly, he belongs to if it's not Heaven or Hell, and that he knew where to file a complaint. The wall monster keeps finding him, and the damnedest things start talking to him out of the blue.

The most recent is the most embarrassing: a My Mutant Pony one of the neighborhood kids left on the sidewalk outside his house. It's a queasy shade of zombified green, insists on calling him 'bro,' and keeps telling him his life would be so much better if he and the wall monster would just be friends. It yells--loudly and incessantly--when Johnny chucks it in the closet.

"You don't have to be a dick about it, bro," it glowers at him, tossing its mane and stamping an irate hoof when he finally can't take it anymore and throws open the door. "It's okay to admit you're lonely! You know who else is lonely? Your wall buddy! If _you_ can't open up, bro, maybe you should invite someone else over to open up instead."

He thinks about hacking it into pieces, but he doesn't want a plastic pony head floating after him whenever he comes home. He's not that crazy.

Not that this place really feels like home.

There's one other person who remembers Johnny's face, but his own almost isn't recognized when Johnny bumps into him at last. Squee's grown up, but Johnny looks just the same, and the Cherry Brainfreezy Squee's holding almost drops to the ground as Squee's eyes go wide.

Johnny pauses in the doorway of the 24-7, back in the city where it all began, and blinks at the kid uneasily. What's with all the staring? And the shaking? And the tiny squeak that sounded like--

" _Squee_?" Johnny says, dumbfounded, and just hearing that sound a second time makes him feel...content. Not happy--not quite--but like he's been running around in the dark with his hands stretched out, groping for landmarks, and someone just turned on the lights. Even "happy" can't compare with that.

Squee is taller, his hair as messy as Johnny remembers, his eyes still huge and soft and patient, like a bunny waiting to get nailed to a wall. _Waiting to...wha_? Johnny asks himself, distracted, that unguarded thought waking other thoughts. _Nailed to the...is that supposed to sound so...wrong_? Weird images scurry at the edge of his mind like cockroaches, and though he ignores them in favor of staring at the boy he remembers as one of the few uncomplicated things in his life, those thoughts, like Mr. Samsa, refuse to die.

"N-n-nny?" Squee stammers, hand tightening around his drink. The cup is just waxy paper; it's going to crumple in just a moment, and at least one of them is going to get splattered. Johnny wouldn't mind so much--it's not exactly an unusual look for him--but it'd be a shame to waste a good Brainfreezy.

He reaches out and takes the drink from Squee's hand instead, only once he's got it, he doesn't know what to do with it. Squee doesn't look like he's going to ask for it back, but Johnny's not that mean. You don't just go around stealing Brainfreezies from little Squees; it's not right. Only he can't totally resist temptation, so he steals a sip anyway, a little disgusted that he's not disgusted over sharing a straw.

"Long time no see," he says, handing the drink back with a smile, and Squee blinks, looks at him, looks at his hand. And takes the cup back with fingers that don't shake much at all this time.

"Yeah," Squee says, eyes fixed on his Brainfreezy. "I...wasn't sure you were coming back."

"Said I would," Johnny says, shrugging uncomfortably. Squee's eyes when they look up are still huge, but some of the panic has faded. Squee's always been like that, Johnny remembers: nervous at first but always calming, at least until Johnny does something stupid or crazy.

It's funny, he thinks as he watches Squee lift his drink, take the straw between his lips. Did he ever notice he was being either back then?

Something's missing, though, and Johnny's eyes narrow, looking Squee up and down, head leaning to the left and right to peer behind him. "Where's the bear?" he asks, half expecting it to jump out from behind the counter or the chip display and start screaming lies.

Squee's eyes are incredulous as he says, "I'm _seventeen_ , Nny."

"Uh-huh. Where's the bear?"

"In my backpack," Squee mumbles, dropping his eyes with a hot, painful-looking flush. "I duct tape his mouth when I have to go to school."

"Fucking bear," Johnny growls, but he's weirdly pleased all the same. Squee wouldn't be Squee without Shmee's caustic presence, and it's just one more sign that some things are just the way they should be.

He wonders if Squee likes classical, late-night horror movies, Kafka. He wonders--

"Wait. Does that duct tape thing actually work?"

The next time Pepito finds himself rubbing his horns, gritting his teeth against the dropping-elevator lurch-and-settle of reality being rebooted, Johnny has nothing to do with it.


End file.
